The Poetry Marathon

15 2017 Baby Boomer Identity Crisis.

Baby Boomer Identity Crisis.
by Paul Robert Sanford

They told all us youngsters when we became wan and confused
after matriculation in college in the sixties
that we were just suffering from and “identity crisis.”

The implication was that we would get over the yips,
settle down and become good square citizens
as soon as we got some life experience.

By the time I graduated
the Vietnam War had hit its stride;
assassinations claimed MLK, RFK and Malcolm.
the Watts riots and so forth burned, baby, burned.

Half of us dropped out in some way or another,
the other half pursued success and stability.
Some of us are still lost,
the rest of us entering a happy retirement.

It turns out the world has gone through an identity crisis also.

In that half century America has dominated a world
,full of war, famine, racism and tribalism,
genocide, growing chattel slavery,
a population boom, environmental challenges,
extinction of species, loss of habitat,
global warming, stagflation, inflation, recession and
the rise of depression among all of us.

Like some people today, we were too smart, too hip, to vote.
All the choices were between the lesser of two evils.
Then we learned how bad the greater of two evils can be.

There have been unprecedented changes in personal freedom
in our country, even as freedom is challenged and held hostage across the world.
We strum our lyres and sing Kum Bah Yah and We Shall Overcome
and to the naked eye it looks like progress.
For a brief window it looked like even the Supreme Court
was on the side of Justice and Freedom.

Decade after decade the pendulum has swung back and forth
between courage and terror, liberty and law and order,
Justice and Just Us.

For the first time it looks like the next generation won’t do as well as their parents.
Or a few of them will join the 1%.
The election of 2016 shocked us back half a century.
I don’t know if we will recover in time for me to see it.

Identity Crisis? It’s personal, it’s national, it’s global, maybe it’s universal
as we discover new and glittering ideas about cosmology.

It looks like we need to take to the streets and the ballot box again
and take back our identity.

14 2017 Golden Shovel form from Tracy Plath’s poem Morpheus hour 5 2017 marathon.

Morpheus extended.
By Paul Robert Sanford

I stripped away my outer layers
until I lay naked in the sun,
a yearning Ophelia, unable to complete
my wish for oblivion deeper than sleep,
instead allowing a silence
that was not silent
to fill and heal
an aching teen’s troubled soul.
From Morpheus by Tracy Plath (Used by permission)

Let us go, you and I
our schedule stripped,
stealing a chance to get away.
It has been so long since my
feet carried me into the outer
world. This is the chance to cast away layers
of languid torpor until
you in your modest way and I
singing a free song, a lay,
strip our beings naked.

This is the world we live in.
like moles we have hidden from the
life giving rays of the sun.
No wonder there has been a
dissatisfaction, a yearning.
Like Ophelia
we are unable
to imagine a world to
make us complete

but now, having broken my
bonds and fulfilling my wish
to enjoy the world in a deeper
way. What more do we need than
food and friends and drink and sleep.

Let us celebrate life instead,
seeking out joy and allowing
hope to give us a
burst of energy that will silence
not only the voices that
we hear, but transport us to a state that was
ours when our birth had not
taken place and all was silent
except for the music of our mother’s heartbeat that served to
calm us, and fill
us with the rhythm of life, and
the sounds of voices, music to heal
us and prepare us for the harshness of reality, an
experience called birth that leaves us aching
for the safety of the womb, until eventually a teen’s
imagination tells us only we are troubled,
only we have a soul.

13 2017 Strange New World

Strange New World
by Paul Robert Sanford

In the world of tomorrow
the oceans became warmer by two degrees Celsius.
Glaciers melted, and rivers of water ran into the sea.
The seas rose several inches,
just enough to cover some island nations
and flood the lowlands all over the world.

But that wasn’t the most dramatic problem.
The warmer oceans gave off more water vapor
into the air, where it traveled over the land and cooled,
pouring down onto specific locations with unprecedented levels.
One in a thousand year rainstorms began to flood new
areas that had never flooded before.
After the heavy rains, the air was depleted and there were droughts.

Tropical storms became more powerful
because of the higher temperatures and the additional moisture,
and reached hurricane intensity more often,
washing great waves over coastal cities,
changing the coastline by washing soil and sand out to sea.

Whole populations moved, but had nowhere to go.
The amount of available fertile land shrank.
Famine killed millions, and disease that followed millions more.

Governments changed.
Too frightened to face the reality of what was happening,
people voted for whomever would give them some kind of false hope.
Soon a powerful minority banded together to demand proof-
proof the seas were rising, proof the temperature was rising,
but more important, proof that something could be done about it.

After all, they argued, the Creator God still held the earth in His hand,
and his unknown will controlled our destinies.
Nothing mere humans could do would change the world one way or another,
because the promise was given with the rainbow that God would not again
destroy the world by flood.

And so, humanity, not God, wreaked a final judgment on themselves.

12 2017 wax on wax off government
Wax On, Wax Off Government
by Paul Robert Sanford

I’m beginning to give up.
A third of a year of this nonsense in Washington DC
has me holding onto my balls for fear they’ll steal them.

This wax on wax off government in which one bunch of yahoos spends
all their time undoing what the previous bunch did
seems to me like a long road to nowhere.

Meanwhile, at just the wrong time,
vanishing species are protected less,
the waters are allowed to rise,
more citizens are denied the vote.

Immigrants are made unwelcome
on the assumption that people
who used to have good union jobs
will gladly go to work doing backbreaking labor
for a few dollars an hour.

111 words

Wax 2
to 4
a 3
the 4
are 4
on 2
(subtract 13)

11 2017 Shylock

Shylock
by Paul Robert Sanford

What am I to you?
A Villain? A Joke? A Victim?

Some Christian wrote me
with a big nose and greedy palm,
burning for vengeance on those who have wronged me.
He got part of it right.

I am a human being with feelings and needs.
All of us need respect and security.
How dare you push me to the side of the street,
spit on my robes,
borrow money from me but hide me away in the ghetto.
Force me out of every honest trade into money lending
then curse me for a money grubbing greedy monster.

Laugh at me for a while.
Yes, I get the boot, I get cheated.
I let my the carry me away,
to think I would ever get Justice
from these Christians.
The fix was in from the first and I fooled myself.

One of these days my descendants will revenge me.
We will work and study until we succeed beyond your kind.
Our lives will be prosperous and secure,
at least compared to this medieval age.
But we will still be driven by the memories
of cheatings and beatings, of pogroms and forced labor.

Never again will we let the world walk all over us.
You have wronged us, and none of us will every be allowed to forget.

10 2017 Jury Duty

Jury Duty
by Paul Sanford

“Off with her head” the queen cried.
No jury trial here.
But I am called for jury duty.
I don’t want to order any heads cut off.
Oh No, it’s up to me to decide.
Who is telling the truth?
Are the police discriminating against this person?
Where is Justice?

I hate meetings and committees.
What will happen if I disagree with the other 11 jurors?
Will they be angry with me?
Should I try to persuade them?

Oh oh oh. It’s just a straight forward case.
Try to look at it the way most people do.
It’s my civic duty.
I’m a fair minded person, intelligent and empathetic.
Maybe they won’t want me because I’m bipolar.
How dare they discriminate against the mentally ill!
I’ll be on that jury just to show them about equality!

I hope I can stay awake without fidgeting.
Will I get in trouble if I don’t behave the way they want?
Ironic if I am on the jury and wind up in jail.
I wouldn’t be happy in jail.
Nobody is happy in jail.
No jail for anybody.
“Off with his cuffs!”
Everybody gets a free pass from Paul today.

It says here to go online to check whether I am needed.
That’s a nice touch.
I don’t want to be waiting in some jury room all day.
They say to check back to see if I’m needed in the afternoon.
I’m feeling a bit disappointed.

I’m excused. I’ve fulfilled my obligation for this year.
I feel a combination of relief and disappointment.

Don’t judge me, and I won’t jury you.

09 2017 spider

Lo, a Spider
by Paul Robert Sanford

Is this a spider I see before me?
Tiny legs waving an inch from my face?
Where did you come from, friend,
and what is holding you up?

Are you the hard worker
who put those nets to catch bugs
on my bathroom windows?
Carcasses of our prey littering the sill?

How could anyone as tiny as you
conquer such grand beasts?

Thank you for all your hard work.

One of these days I will clear away your work
so you, or your big sisters, can start again,
but in the meantime it comforts me
to think those beasts are not at large
in the house.

I’m glad none of you are big enough to
catch any of the mice,
but small and hairless as you are
I’m comfortable with you.

You are welcome, little friend,
Now it is time to get out of my face.

08 2017
new glasses askew linked haiku (free form)
by Paul Robert Sanford

new glasses don’t fit
nothing looks familiar
there you are!

I don’t get headaches
new glasses aske
ouch!

seeing double
facebook photos of cats
online raging arguments

the warm sun delights
squinting, cataracts
sunburn, headaches

eclipse
don’t look at the sun
I miss everything

special eclipse lenses
glasses all askew
I close my eyes

listen to the news
the world is on fire
I close my ears

closed from sight or sound
a gentle loving touch
thank you, friend!

07 2017 The Nightly Gin Game

The Nightly Gin Game
by Paul Robert Sanford

Kristen and I play cards at the end of the evening.
Always gin. We don’t keep score. We talk about each hand.

Gin is a lot like life.
Kristen plays by hope and hunches as well as the odds.
As much as possible I work out the math and play the “best” card.
We usually come out about even.

When I win I always announce that it was because of either:
Superior Play or
Tremendous Luck.
Kristen explains why she won –
She Finally Got Her Card or
She Made It Work or
They Just All Came Together.

Kristen likes to hold on until she gets gin.
I like to knock, go down with 9 in bunches and an extra card
to catch her with a load of points.
Sometimes it backfires,
and she undercuts me,
but I like the excitement.
I like to think I can tell what’s in her hand by the way she picks up her cards.

Sometimes I collect face cards just for the fun of shuffling them around
and making them work in different combinations.
Kristen has an annoying habit of picking up the first card I lay down,
if it is a face card, particularly a king.
We know each other well.

We both marvel and enjoy
when either of us has a “pretty hand”
with a long run, or some lovely pattern.

We enjoy catching each other either with very few points or
A record number.
The most points you can have without matching
is 98 points
we’ve had hands in the sixties and seventies and marveled and enjoyed.

While Kristen shuffles I putter
or get a snack.
A couple of times I quickly watered my plants.

06 2017 Black Woman’s hair (don’t touch)
.
Some tips for white folks in a multicultural setting.
By Paul Sanford

Introduction: Evidently some of you have not read the manual,
and you are embarrassing us out there.
All you do is shampoo and condition, blow dry and run comb through your hair,
so you re fascinated by people who have to do more elaborate steps.
Don’t embarrass yourself or the people with you.
Don’t run your mouth or ask to touch any black woman’s hair.

White people listen
Learn from 400 years of history
There’s a lesson to be learned
and it’s not some exotic mystery.
I know that she is lovely and you are moved to stare
but please: don’t ever touch a black woman’s hair.

It isn’t fly by accident,
it’s not a case of luck
you’re seeing hours of work
and the spending of some bucks.
So jump off a cliff if someone makes a dare,
but don’t every touch a black woman’s hair.

She may have amazing booty
But you wouldn’t ask to make it clap
And her bosom may be marvelous
keep your gross hands in your lap!
I’ll give you a lesson how to treat her fair and square
Hey! Don’t ever touch a black woman’s hair!

Let me spell it out more plainly
keep your damn hands to yourself.
\None of your damn business
if she stores it on a shelf.
Touching other people is a habit to make rare,
Listen! Don’t ever touch a black woman’s hair!